


(No Sense of) Preservation

by crying_jaybird



Category: Batman - All Media Types, Batman: Under the Red Hood (2010), DCU (Comics)
Genre: A Lot of embalming talk, Bruce Wayne Needs a Hug, Flash Fic, Gen, Jason Todd Needs A Hug, Jason Wishes He Hadn't Come Back, POV Jason Todd, Stream of Consciousness, Struggling, Whumptober 2020, as in no one in this fic is super well off mentally or emotionally, but he's back!, could be seen as Bruce/Jason if you squint, major character death is jason, short and nongraphic reference to necrophilia, somewhat suicidal thoughts?
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2020-10-11
Updated: 2020-10-11
Packaged: 2021-03-08 03:48:06
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: Major Character Death
Chapters: 1
Words: 548
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/26959063
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/crying_jaybird/pseuds/crying_jaybird
Summary: Sometimes, Jason thinks about how if Bruce had made a slightly different choice, he would have been embalmed.
Relationships: Dick Grayson & Bruce Wayne, Jason Todd & Bruce Wayne
Comments: 4
Kudos: 74
Collections: Whumptober 2020





	(No Sense of) Preservation

Memory embalms. Bruce chose not to have him embalmed, once. 

A lifetime ago. 

He'd thought it would be grotesque. Unnatural. 

Bruce considered paying someone to do it all for him, but ended up unable to do so. He heard a segment on the radio about how someone working at a funeral home had been caught doing the deed with a body. Couldn’t imagine having that happen to Jason. Having yet another thing happen to Jason and not being able to fix it or stop it. 

Oh, Gotham! You never disappoint. 

He had sat there himself, alone and he had bathed Jason. He had dressed him himself and had sewn up what he could. 

It was hard work, both emotionally and physically. Jason had been a small kid, but dead weight is dead weight. 

At times he’d cried onto the body, had cradled it close to him in a way that would have him put in Arkham had anyone seen. Like a teddy bear or some other stuffed animal.

Jason doesn’t know any of this, though. He wouldn’t want to even if Bruce felt like sharing. 

Jason does know that Bruce had opted to not have him embalmed, opted for a simple closed casket funeral. Knows it because he's here now, because he clawed his way out of that casket. 

Knows that Dick had argued against both of those things, but was too late to have a say in either. 

He knows only because he once overheard an argument between them that he wasn’t meant to hear. Dick had mentioned it while throwing dozens of other grains of resentment at Bruce, ones built up over years. 

He’d only been listening in because he thought that he might learn something valuable, something that would tell him things he didn’t already know about Bruce or Dick. Something that he could use against them if he ever had to, or even something that he could work around, comforting them about without having to disclose how he'd figured it was an issue to begin with. 

Jason wonders sometimes what would have happened if he’d been embalmed. If Bruce had just gone for it and decided he didn’t want to see his beaten, bloody face (and frankly, entire body) and sent him off to someone who would have injected chemicals into him and put makeup on him and made it look like he hadn't been beaten to death with a crowbar. 

He wonders if he still would have come back to life if he’d been embalmed. Spends time obsessively researching the process, beginning on the internet and moving onto books. He reads enough on it that the librarian gives him dirty looks while he can see and concerned ones when he can’t. Enough that he thinks he’d probably be able to complete the procedure himself without having to reference anything or anyone if he had to. 

He wonders if it would be scorching to be alive, with no blood and just formaldehyde in his veins. Sometimes he wakes up and it feels like he’s burning up from the inside. 

Sometimes he wishes Bruce hadn’t been listening to the radio that day. Then he’d know and wouldn’t have to wonder. Maybe he wouldn’t be able to wonder at all. 

That sounds kind of nice. Sometimes.

**Author's Note:**

> I hope you got something out of reading this! Slightly based on the poem Mother of All Balms by Aria Aber, specifically on the line /and doesn't memory embalm/.


End file.
